Bear Grylls (64 page)
Authors: Bear Grylls
‘Charlie, where are you going?’ Nige asked.
No reply.
‘Scotland is that way,’ Nige said, pointing at the stern behind him, laughing out loud.
Charlie quickly realized his error and swung the helm around. He had been away in his own world for a few minutes and had lost concentration.
‘Did you leave something behind?’ Nige teased.
‘Yeah, those Icelandic girls,’ Charlie replied, chuckling. ‘I can’t get them out of my head.’
We were so close to home that even travelling in the wrong direction only made us laugh. ‘How far to go?’ I asked.
‘Sixty-one miles,’ Nige replied. ‘Sorry, sixty-two now.’ Charlie hit him.
An hour later, Mick was helming. Andy was asleep and Scotland was getting ever closer, but still remained out of sight. We should see it soon, I thought to myself.
Everyone else was quiet.
Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, I heard that terrible, fateful sound. I knew what was happening. The engine was dying, the revs were plummeting, the throttle was no longer responding to
Mick’s acceleration.
Within seconds, we were silent.
No, God, not this close, please no, I said to myself. Please.
Then I thought, no, it’s all right. We’ll be OK. It will be the fuel again. We can sort this. All we need to do is switch to another tank and get the engine going again. It should be
easy. Shouldn’t it?
Andy leaped into the engine bay and set to work.
Five minutes passed.
I glanced at Mick. He was beginning to look anxious. The process shouldn’t take this long.
Eight minutes. Andy had switched the tanks over and had tried to reprime, but the engine wasn’t responding.
We were still bobbing helplessly.
Ten minutes.
My mind was racing: How could we survive the Labrador Sea and cross the Denmark Strait in a storm, and then fail in this gentle following sea, just short of home? It must work. Come on.
Andy was working frantically. I said nothing.
Another turn of the key, still no splutter of life.
Twelve minutes.
Then, once more, a final turn of the key, a spark, a splutter, another splutter . . . a roar, a fantastic surge of power. We had movement again.
‘Just keeping you all on your toes.’ Andy smiled.
We all were grinning, so relieved.
The miles started to fly by. Adrenalin was pulsing through us as we all gathered in the bows, with Nige helming, our eyes glued on the horizon. We couldn’t quite comprehend that we were
about to see the mountains of north Scotland. This moment had been so long in coming.
It was 2.20 p.m. when we finally spotted the distant purple outline of the mountains, dead ahead. We were still 33 miles from land, but the end was literally within sight.
This was the moment to phone Shara.
She had initially planned to travel north and meet us in Scotland, but moving Jesse when he was still so young and just getting settled seemed crazy. I had told her to stay at her mum’s.
It meant we would only have to wait a day longer to see each other again. In any case, I knew we would be so busy in Scotland, doing the press stuff and sorting out the boat. I was happy to wait
another twenty-four hours and see them both in earnest at Gatwick airport. I had waited so long and travelled so far. I wanted our reunion to be perfect.
She answered on the second ring.
‘We can see Scotland, my love,’ I told her, struggling to hold my emotions, ‘dead ahead, getting clearer as we speak. I can see Ben Loyal. You know, the mountain I dragged you
up when we first met, and everyone else got vertigo. Remember? It’s on our nose, straight ahead. I cannot wait to see you, my angel. I told you we would be OK, didn’t I?’
I could hear the relief in her voice when she said gently, ‘My God, this has been a bad one.’
I looked up at Ben Loyal ahead. It seemed to be watching us, willing us on. There was magic in the air.
The plan had always been to arrive in Scotland in this small estuary, near to the lodge belonging to an old friend of Shara’s and mine.
Sam Sykes and his family lived in a small, remote part of Sutherland, on the north coast, at a place called Kinloch. Shara and I had met there, many years ago, at New Year. It was one of the
best days I can remember. I had been staying up there with Sam, training and climbing. It was two months before the Everest expedition in 1998, and I had everything apart from girls on my mind.
I was climbing every day, pushing myself, preparing myself mentally and physically for the months ahead in the Himalayas. I was very solitary and focused, and probably a bit of a nightmare. Then
this girl called Shara walked in, dressed in a tatty red coat, and life has never been the same.
Together, we made up silly dances, kissed in the woods and fell asleep on the sofa in our boots, with my big duffel coat over us. Kinloch would always be special to us both.
I had planned with Sam to have just a small band of family, friends and sponsors meet us ‘unofficially’ a few miles off Kinloch in his boat. We would then come in and spend a night
at his lodge before heading back out the following morning and cruising along the coast to John O’Groats for the official homecoming.
To me, however, there was only ever going to be one real homecoming and that was our arrival here in Kinloch, with the five of us in the bows, staring ahead, gaze fixed, straining to see the
outlying shadow of Rabbit Island at the mouth of the Kinloch estuary.
However, the plan wasn’t quite going so smoothly at Sam’s end. The two guys from Arnold and Son, Eric and Jean-Marie, were delayed in transit from Zurich to Inverness. Despite a mad
dash in a small hired car that apparently resembled a scene from the film
Trains, Planes and Automobiles
, with these two smart Swiss businessmen racing like rally drivers along the narrow
Scottish lanes, they couldn’t reach this remote corner of Scotland in time to get aboard Sam’s boat and meet us at sea.
So it was Chloë, Charlie’s father, James Laing, Alex Rayner, Jamie Curtis, a cameraman, and Lorraine, Andy’s girlfriend, who clambered aboard Sam’s boat and ventured out,
earnestly searching for us through the haze of rolling Scottish waves.
Linking up wasn’t straightforward. For some time they couldn’t see us, and we couldn’t see them. Radio contact was intermittent and poor.
Eventually, Chloë spotted some spray on the horizon, and as we drew nearer, they saw what they hoped would be our small yellow boat on the horizon. Then radio contact became clearer and we
heard Sam’s voice over the intercom.
‘I think we can see you,’ he shouted excitedly.
The boat was dipping between the troughs of the waves, rolling in towards them. They waved frantically. We still couldn’t see them. And then we could. A small blue dot to starboard. We
came back on the radio and they heard our voice for the first time:
‘This is the
Arnold and Son Explorer
to Sam – we have you in sight, we’re coming home.’
We circled their boat, waving madly. Sam was going berserk, Chloë was shouting and Lorraine was crying. We had done it. We were almost there. Sam escorted us in towards a beautiful, sandy
cove, and we drove the RIB up on to the beach. We killed the engine one last time, leaped ashore and hugged everyone, jumping up and down in the surf.
In the time it had taken for them to escort us in, Eric and Jean-Marie had finally arrived. Just in time. As they pulled up with a skid on the track above the beach, they saw the boat that their
vision had made possible pull into the cove.
When I saw Eric, I ran across the beach to where he was standing. I just wanted to thank him for everything he had done to make this dream happen. However, as I went to hug him, and he squeezed
me, my dry-suit released a stench of stale, unwashed body odour from my neck seal. It was horrendous, he told me later, laughing.
Through almost 3,000 miles on the ocean, it had been impossible to maintain any kind of personal hygiene in the RIB, even though, to his credit, Andy was meticulous in brushing his teeth every
morning, wherever we were. For the most part, we just lived and slept and did everything in what we wore.
I hugged Eric again for good measure.
We then knotted several lengths of rope together so we could secure the RIB safely to the harbour wall, and began swigging from bottles of Mumm champagne. Eric toasted us, Alex toasted us, Andy
kissed Lorraine (poor girl!), and the moment was perfect.
So, on this quiet Scottish beach, with just a handful of the most important people around us, we celebrated the safe return of our expedition. We had faced the frozen ocean, and we had survived.
We were home and alive.
After a while, we drove up to Sam’s house and threw our kit down in a heap. Then I wandered down to the small brook below his house, where Shara and I had so often swum together. The water
was bubbling over the rocks into the pool. I stripped off, stood on the overhanging rock above the pool, and dived in. As I came up for air, I felt the emotion, the strain and the fear of the last
two years wash off me. Literally. I couldn’t help smiling. I had been so worried I would not deliver on my promise to Shara and return safely. But we had. I shook the water from my hair, took
a deep breath, and went under once more.
While we had still been in the Faroes, during a telephone conversation Chloë had asked me if there was anything special we would like for dinner on our first night in Kinloch. There could
only ever be one thing: roast beef with all the trimmings. And it was duly delivered.
We ate like kings – in fact, to be more specific, we probably ate like King Henry VIII, gnawing the finest beef off huge bones, laughing at the same old jokes and drinking far too much red
wine. It was the best of meals – cosy, intimate and wild.
As we sat round that table in Scotland, I felt overwhelmed by pride at what we had achieved and enormous gratitude to be surrounded by such truly good people.
Everyone had their own private feelings on the expedition, drawing their own conclusions from what we had all experienced.
Charlie reflects:
Almost the first thing I said to my father when I saw him on the beach in Scotland was that I could hardly believe how five men could have travelled 3,000 miles in this tiny
living space, and endured so much pressure and strain, and yet there had not been a single cross word between any of us.
The expedition was amazing for the bond that developed between us, but I think I most enjoyed the sense of being so alone with the elements. We were travelling in an open, rigid inflatable
boat, and, in explaining what we went through, the most significant of those adjectives is certainly ‘open’.
I only now appreciate what this really meant. There was absolutely no protection from the wind, the waves and the noise on that boat. Everything was in your face, all the time, soaking you,
deafening you, numbing you, burning you.
Of course, it wasn’t always fun. There were times when it was 100 per cent horrible. However, all in all, it has been the most mind-blowing experience. To be made to feel so vulnerable,
but to survive – it’s not a bad thing to go through.
People still ask me what it was like on the ocean, and the best I can do is say that it was like parking an open-topped people-carrier in a car wash, and living in it for two weeks with four
other men, during an earthquake, in sub-zero temperatures.
Sometime later, my dad asked me if I thought I had changed as a person because of the expedition, and I gave him an honest answer: ‘Not really.’ I have just got on with my life.
Maybe I have learned to appreciate things a bit more than before, but it’s marginal. I just feel very lucky to have had this extraordinary opportunity.
Andy reflects:
In some ways, it all ended too quickly. I felt a bit like a chef who had spent so long preparing a meal, which was then eaten in twenty minutes. For me, sixteen days passed
like twenty minutes.
It was a great experience. There were good times and hard times, but never bad times, although I did have a sense of foreboding when we set out for Iceland with bad weather ahead.
Looking back, I am certain the sea could have thrown even worse at us. I think we all realize we got away with it this time and, with one twist of the dice, it could have been so different. It
might very easily not have been such a happy ending to such an exciting expedition.
None the less, we got home safely and, in the days ahead on HMS
Newcastle
, I have no doubt that I will miss the feeling of being part of a team and having done something out of the
ordinary.
This sums Andy up, modest as ever. But as Trucker, an old army friend, pointed out, ‘Andy is the type of person that wins Britain its wars’: self-effacing, diligent, reliable and
resilient. He had done the Royal Navy proud as part of our team and I am so pleased to have made a friend for life.
Some weeks after our return, out of the blue, Andy phoned me. He was on a run ashore in Scotland. He had been on board HMS
Newcastle
, the 425-foot destroyer he is stationed with, off the
Scottish coast, and it had been blowing a gale. He had gone up to the bridge and stood transfixed.
‘It was almost identical conditions to that storm we were in off Iceland,’ he told me. ‘Force Eights, howling winds and wild white horses everywhere.’
All he could see from the bridge was the foaming sea pouring over the decks of the ship, tonnes upon tonnes of white water. As he stared, he said, it was only then that he started to realize
just what we had lived through.
‘Maybe at the time your mind shuts out those feelings,’ he said ‘But there, on the bridge, all I could think was, to be out on that sea in a small RIB, you’d have to be
suicidal.’
Nige reflects:
I suppose, more than anything, an experience like this expedition gives you a real sense of perspective. For me, I had never before felt my life was in danger, and certainly
not for such a long period of time. I remember thinking, well, after dealing with that, how can a problem at work ever feel really serious, how can I ever be really worried by a deadline or an
angry client?
Then that feeling wears off, and you soon get sucked back into a normal way of life again.
With hindsight, if I had known what it was going to be like, I’m not sure I would have joined the expedition, and I really don’t want to put myself in such dangerous situations
again.
All that said, it was a fantastic experience. I discovered how resilient I could be and, even if I never get any feeling back in my toes, because of the frostnip, I will always be grateful for
that self-belief I have gained: that I can achieve something extraordinary.